Friday, April 16, 2010

New Project Teaser and Rehearsal Log

Here are some selections from the exploratory "rehearsals" for a new project. I won't reveal too many details yet. For now, I'll just say it attempts to build on the tools, energy, and personnel of the later Chai House years. These selections aren't necessarily representative of what we'll be doing (the numbers -- of players -- are often wrong and I've tried to obscure the process a bit in the edits here, since we're still more learning the tools than employing them in their intended context), but Iiked the sound quality and the energy of these recordings enough that I wanted to share some of them. They're mostly intended as a log for the group itself, and perhaps as a hint to the curious NBP-fan of things to come. Until we start playing shows, I won't add new posts for this material, but will just continue to add tracks to the list below.

R1_TwoOutOfFour (1.5 megs): From the first get-together. We spent most of our time in a productive discussion of the concept and tools this night, but still managed to play for close to an hour. I'll probably add more clips from here eventually ... just wanted to post this one as a good example of what it is (wink wink)

R2_LookinForAGirl (14 megs): Lots of tools built during this get-together, but my bass tone was so tiny and distant that most of the recording is a bit harsh ... that is until this clip from the end of the night where I drastically re-adjusted my sound and we did one last series of movements. (may still post some other condensed clips eventually)

R3 (43 megs): lost the best vocal chorus and some really great jamming when I mistakenly thought I was recording our second movement, but still plenty of great ideas in this condensed version of what was left. Personally, I think the key-bass tone is finally working on this one ... and the tools of the project feel pretty solid now! Looking forward to at least one more to try it all out with a larger group. Then, hopefully shows!! (and I'll stop being so secretive about what we're up to :))

Here's the material from April's get-together, featuring the first-time addition of Abraham Neuwelt on percussion. It just keeps getting better! The grooves are consistently strong (and interesting!!) here, and get even stronger in the third clip, where I begin to focus more on bass. At the time, I thought the second clip -- in spite of some solid playing by the others -- was mostly crap (It seemed the solidity and interest of my bass grooves were suffering as I tried to join TQ with my right hand in the upper melodo-harmonic area of the mix). But in listening back with my ear on the full mix, even the second clip is full of good moments -- even after my keyboard gets stuck in 'dual'-mode and loses all "bass". It's nice to have Jesse alternating back and forth between the djembe and the piano here! Maybe he could bring his keyboard out to shows? It feels like we just need to reach that critical 6+ person mass and we can start playing out! (I know I said I was going to edit these down to hide the process and remove the rough-spots, but I'm really low on time at the moment, so these are unedited.)

R5_1 (25 megs)R5_2 (56 megs)
Finally, 'Critical Mass' achieved!! :)) We had a couple of cancellations and *still* managed to make it to 6. Great density, momentum, and groove. Further innovations to be integrated into the tools, but mostly, this was the meeting that proved to me that we're ready to play some shows.

Just realized I hadn't been listing who was playing with me on these until the R4 session (though the metadata on the files will have the last names) ... think I'll continue to avoid outing everyone here for now, but hopefully it'll become clear enough soon when we find a live venue for this stuff.

About Me

My name is Andrew Woods. Since sometime around 1991, I've been a part of a number of improvising musical groups and have maintained an online archive of recent live recordings for the past 20 or so years, originally called 'The Jam of the Week Modular Album Page' (until 2008) and then recently converted to blog form here as 'Freelab'. Sources of these largely improvised recordings include solo-improv experiments, one-off group jams, and recently rehearsals and shows from my structured-improv-acoustic-dance-band, "WEGO". The goal with presenting these recordings in a blog format is to entice the other players, the live audience, and whatever online audience there may be for these recordings to comment on the music -- describing their own experience of the show, pointing out their favorite parts, and otherwise adding any relevent context that is lacking in my limited descriptions.